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Sword Art Online: Zeltran |
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SAO wasn't perfect.
Every single player was painfully aware of this fact. The fact that the Sleep PK was even possible was all the evidence one needed that this world was designed by someone fallible.
That being said, Cardinal was an absurd feat of software engineering, and rarely if ever could one find anything in the environment of the game itself that could be considered "broken". Unbalanced, maybe, but the system would correct that almost immediately.
This is why Yzjdriel wasn't sure what to make of the icon he was seeing right now. It was undeniably true, as the system never displayed the «Inner Area» tag when one was in the «Outer Field» zone. But he wasn't in a city right now.
In fact, he wasn't entirely sure where exactly he was right now. He'd been exploring a cave on Floor 18 that, as far as he knew at least, no one else had found yet. The entrance was barely large enough for a beaver to come and go, and it had taken him several days to widen the tunnel that led down into the ground enough that he could fit inside. Once he'd made it about a hundred meters down, the natural structure had widened to be large enough that a bus could probably have driven through the tunnels without hitting the sides, though barely.
The monster spawns down here had been weird, too. Mobs from all across the first thirty Floors had shown up sporadically, as if the system wasn't sure what should be spawning there. This only led more credence to his theory that he'd found some kind of leftover area from an early stage of development that simply hadn't been removed - like the empty version of Lucky 38 that served as a debug room in FNV. Man, that game was old. Ryu himself was probably one of the only people in SAO who'd played it, given that it was a foreign title for a console that was older than his parents' parents. The PC version definitely wouldn't run on any modern OS, that was for sure.
Shaking his head to bring himself back to the present, he scanned the area, looking for signs that this was a glitch. A hidden, non-town Safe Zone wasn't unique, but one that was so difficult to get to and having such an odd smattering of monsters guarding it was certainly out of the ordinary.
As if in response to his question, he received a Quest notification.
>-< Accept Quest: «Arrested Development»? >-<
"Alright, Cardinal," he said aloud, his smirk turning into a full-on grin as he accepted the prompt. "I'll play."
"Hey, Khan," he called out as he entered the shop to find the front room empty. "You in?"
"In the back," came the reply, so he pushed the curtain aside to find the smith working on a large scythe, its owner lounging in one of the chairs off to the side. "Need a tune-up?" he asked without looking up.
"Actually, I was looking to get your help with an odd Quest," Ryu said, causing the smith to stop hammering on the scythe for a moment as he looked up.
"This about that hole you went digging in?" he asked before turning his attention back to the weapon.
"Kind of? I need to make a run at the sub-boss of the Field Dungeon on 45 to get the mats for the quest item, but I was hoping to get you to take a look at something I found in the hole, maybe set up some traps and such to keep people out? I've got a Corridor back and forth from there and home, but it's only a matter of time before someone else stumbles ass-backward into the same Quest, and this is one of those first-past-the-post things: no reward for second place."
"Floor 45?" the scythe wielder asked, having apparently tuned into the conversation when the rhythmic hammering paused. "By yourself? That's a tall order for a solo player."
Ryu shrugged. "All it will cost me is time, and since I've got a headstart I figure I can burn a little by playing this one close to my chest."
"You know that boss arena's full of overlapping DoT fields that stack, right?" the other player asked. "You need some serious DPS to win that fight."
Yzjdriel grinned. "Or some serious healing."
The other white-haired man shrugged. "Sure, but stay too long in a place like that and you'll draw the wrong kind of attention."
"What, like Laughing Coffin?" Ryu laughed. "They wouldn't try something like that in an area with so many DoTs. One stray attack and they could get wiped, and they don't have anyone who can burst me down fast enough for that not to be a serious risk."
"No, LC's still on 31 after they kicked the Silk Gang out. They know they've got a target on their backs now that's bigger than the one that's usually there, so they're consolidating. I'm talking about Xenxa."
Xenxa. Ryu hadn't heard a lot about that Guild, but what he'd heard had been telling enough. They ran a kind of gambling/protection/powerleveling racket out of some base on one of the upper floors and survived by mostly not killing people. Their leader had been killed not too long ago, and from what he'd heard, that player's wife was on the warpath looking for the killer, a player who wielded a- ahh. "Don't suppose you'd be up for a little collaboration, O Angel?" he asked.
"Why not," came the reply after a moment. "Can't say I don't need the help with all the heat on me right now. You sure you can handle all that chip damage?" he asked just as Khan finished working on the weapon and set his hammer down.
"Won't be a problem. I didn't claim the title of Support Tank by being bad at my job." He held out his hand for the other player to shake. "I'm Zid."
"Xelias. So what's this about a Quest with only one winner?"
Ryu laughed as Khan packed his travel bag and the Angel of Death stowed his weapon. "So there was this weird hole..."